Part 7 (1/2)
Communication. Reason is the only means of communication among men, and an objectively perceivable reality is their only common frame of reference; when these are invalidated (i.e., held to be irrelevant) in the field of morality, force becomes men's only way of dealing with one another.
[”What Is Capitalism?” CUI, 22.]
Concepts and, therefore, language are primarily a tool of cognition-not of communication, as is usually a.s.sumed. Communication is merely the consequence, not the cause nor the primary purpose of concept-formation-a crucial consequence, of invaluable importance to men, but still only a consequence. Cognition precedes communication; the necessary precondition of communication is that one have something to communicate. (This is true even of communication among animals, or of communication by grunts and growls among inarticulate men, let alone of communication by means of so complex and exacting a tool as language.) [ITOE, 92.].
See also CONCEPTS; LANGUAGE; PHYSICAL FORCE; REASON.
Communism. When, at the age of twelve, at the time of the Russian revolution, I first heard the Communist principle that Man must exist for the sake of the State, I perceived that this was the essential issue, that this principle was evil, and that it could lead to nothing but evil, regardless of any methods, details, decrees, policies, promises and pious plat.i.tudes. This was the reason for my opposition to Communism then -and it is my reason now. I am still a little astonished, at times, that too many adult Americans do not understand the nature of the fight against Communism as clearly as I understood it at the age of twelve: they continue to believe that only Communist methods are evil, while Communist ideals are n.o.ble. All the victories of Communism since the year 1917 are due to that particular belief among the men who are still free.
[”Foreword,” WTL, vii.]
Communists, like all materialists, are neo-mystics: it does not matter whether one rejects the mind in favor of revelations or in favor of conditioned reflexes. The basic premise and the results are the same.
[”Faith and Force: The Destroyers of the Modern World,” PWNI, 85; pb 70.]
The Communists' chief-purpose is to destroy every form of independence-independent work, independent action, independent property, independent thought, an independent mind, or an independent man. Conformity, alikeness, servility, submission and obedience are necessary to establish a Communist slave-state.
[”Screen Guide for Americans,” Plain Talk, Nov. 1947, 41.]
It is the Communists' intention to make people think that personal success is somehow achieved at the expense of others and that every successful man has hurt somebody by becoming successful. It is the Communists' aim to discourage all personal effort and to drive men into a hopeless, dispirited, gray herd of robots who have lost all personal ambition, who are easy to rule, willing to obey and willing to exist in selfless servitude to the State.
[Ibid., 39.]
If America perishes, it will perish by intellectual default. There is no diabolical conspiracy to destroy it: no conspiracy could be big enough and strong enough.... As to the communist conspirators in the service of Soviet Russia, they are the best ill.u.s.tration of victory by default: their successes are handed to them by the concessions of their victims.
[”For the New Intellectual,” FNI, 52; pb 46.]
When men share the same basic premise, it is the most consistent ones who win. So long as men accept the altruist morality, they will not be able to stop the advance of communism. The altruist morality is Soviet Russia's best and only weapon.
[”Conservatism: An Obituary,” CUI, 196.]
See also COLLECTIVISM; DICTATORs.h.i.+P; EGALITARIANISM; FASCISM and COMMUNISM/SOCIALISM; HUMAN RIGHTS and PROPERTY RIGHTS; ”McCARTHYISM”; POLYLOGISM; PROPERTY RIGHTS; SOCIALISM; SOVIET RUSSIA; STATISM.
Compa.s.sion. I regard compa.s.sion as proper only toward those who are innocent victims, but not toward those who are morally guilty. If one feels compa.s.sion for the victims of a concentration camp, one cannot feel it for the torturers. If one does feel compa.s.sion for the torturers, it is an act of moral treason toward the victims.
[”Playboy's Interview with Ayn Rand,” pamphlet, 10.]
See also ALTRUISM; JUSTICE; MERCY; PITY.
Compet.i.tion. Compet.i.tion is a by-product of productive work, not its goal. A creative man is motivated by the desire to achieve, not by the desire to beat others.
[”The Moratorium on Brains,” ARI., 1,2,4.]
A compet.i.tion presupposes some basic principles held in common by all the compet.i.tors, such as the rules of the game in athletics, or the functions of the free market in business.
[”Apollo 11,” TO, Sept. 1969, 9.]
The only actual factor required for the existence of free compet.i.tion is: the unhampered, un.o.bstructed operation of the mechanism of a free market. The only action which a government can take to protect free compet.i.tion is: Laissez-faire!-which, in free translation, means: Hands off! But the ant.i.trust laws established exactly opposite conditions-and achieved the exact opposite of the results they had been intended to achieve.
There is no way to legislate compet.i.tion; there are no standards by which one could define who should compete with whom, how many compet.i.tors should exist in any given field, what should be their relative strength or their so-called ”relevant markets,” what prices they should charge, what methods of compet.i.tion are ”fair” or ”unfair.” None of these can be answered, because these precisely are the questions that can be answered only by the mechanism of a free market.
[”America's Persecuted Minority: Big Business,” CUI, 54.]
The concept of free compet.i.tion enforced by law is a grotesque contradiction in terms. It means: forcing people to be free at the point of a gun. It means: protecting people's freedom by the arbitrary rule of unanswerable bureaucratic edicts.
[Ibid., 52.]
Compet.i.tion, properly so-called, rests on the activity of separate, independent individuals owning and exchanging private property in the pursuit of their self-interest. It arises when two or more such individuals become rivals for the same trade.
[George Reisman, ”Platonic Compet.i.tion,” TO, Aug. 1968, 9.]
The compet.i.tion which takes place under capitalism acts to regulate prices simply in accordance with the full costs of production and with the requirements of earning a rate of profit. It does not act to drive prices to the level of ”marginal costs” or to the point where they reflect a ”scarcity” of capacity.
[Ibid., 11.]
The compet.i.tor who cuts his price is fully aware of the impact on other compet.i.tors and that they will try to match his price. He acts in the knowledge that some of them will not he able to afford the cut, while he is, and that he will eventually pick up their business. He is able to afford the cut when and if his productive efficiency is greater than theirs, which lowers his costs to a level they cannot match.... Thus price compet.i.tion, under capitalism, is the result of a contest of efficiency, competence, ability.
[Ibid., Sept. 1968, 9.]
”Compet.i.tion” is an active, not a pa.s.sive, noun. It applies to the ent.i.te sphere of economic activity, not merely to production, but also to trade; it implies the necessity of taking action to affect the conditions of the market in one's own favor.
The error of the nineteenth-century observers was that they restricted a wide abstraction-compet.i.tion-to a narrow set of particulars, to the ”pa.s.sive” compet.i.tion projected by their own interpretation of cla.s.sical economics. As a result, they concluded that the alleged ”failure” of this fict.i.tious ”pa.s.sive compet.i.tion” negated the entire theoretical structure of cla.s.sical economics, including the demonstration of the fact that laissez-faire is the most efficient and productive of all possible economic systems. They concluded that a free market, by its nature, leads to its own destruction-and they came to the grotesque contradiction of attempting to preserve the freedom of the market by government controls, i.e., to preserve the benefits of laissez-faire by abrogating it.
[Alan Greenspan, ”Ant.i.trust,” CUI, 67.]
See also ANt.i.tRUST LAWS; CAPITALISM; COMPROMISE; FREE MARKET; FREEDOM; MONOPOLY; PRODUCTlVENESS.
Compromise. A compromise is an adjustment of conflicting claims by mutual concessions. This means that both parties to a compromise have some valid claim and some value to offer each other. And this means that both parties agree upon some fundamental principle which serves as a base for their deal.
[”Doesn't Life Require Compromise?” VOS, 85; pb 68.]
There can be no compromise on basic principles. There can be no compromise on moral issues. There can be no compromise on matters of knowledge, of truth, of rational conviction.
[” 'Extremism,' or The Art of Smearing,” CUI, 182.]
It is only in regard to concretes or particulars, implementing a mutually accepted basic principle, that one may compromise. For instance, one may bargain with a buyer over the price one wants to receive for one's product, and agree on a sum somewhere between one's demand and his offer. The mutually accepted basic principle, in such case, is the principle of trade, namely: that the buyer must pay the seller for his product. But if one wanted to be paid and the alleged buyer wanted to obtain one's product for nothing, no compromise, agreement or discussion would be possible, only the total surrender of one or the other.
There can be no compromise between a property owner and a burglar; offering the burglar a single teaspoon of one's silverware would not be a compromise, but a total surrender-the recognition of his right to one's property.
[”Doesn't Life Require Compromise?” VOS, 85; pb 68.]
Contrary to the fanatical belief of its advocates, compromise [on basic principles] does not satisfy, but dissatisfies everybody; it does not lead to general fulfillment, but to general frustration; those who try to be all things to all men, end up by not being anything to anyone. And more: the partial victory of an unjust claim, encourages the claimant to try further; the partial defeat of a just claim, discourages and paralyzes the victim.
[”The Cas.h.i.+ng-In: The Student 'Rebellion,' ” CUI, 255.]
There are two sides to every issue: one side is right and the other is wrong, but the middle is always evil. The man who is wrong still retains some respect for truth, if only by accepting the responsibility of choice. But the man in the middle is the knave who blanks out the truth in order to pretend that no choice or values exist, who is willing to sit out the course of any battle, willing to cash in on the blood of the innocent or to crawl on his belly to the guilty, who dispenses justice by condemning both the robber and the robbed to jail, who solves conflicts by ordering the thinker and the fool to meet each other halfway. In any compromise between food and poison, it is only death that can win. In any compromise between good and evil, it is only evil that can profit. In that transfusion of blood which drains the good to feed the evil, the compromiser is the transmitting rubber tube....
When men reduce their virtues to the approximate, then evil acquires the force of an absolute, when loyalty to an unyielding purpose is dropped by the virtuous, it's picked up by scoundrels-and you get the indecent spectacle of a cringing, bargaining, traitorous good and a self-righteously uncompromising evil.
[GS, FNI, 217; pb 173.]